March 2011
2 posts
C# API Design: Type Inference, Named Parameters,...
I’ve become a fan of using named parameters for adding expressiveness to code that could otherwise be ambiguous. You could argue that there are better approaches for increasing code readability, but sometimes a named parameter can go a long way. For instance, the intention of the following code is pretty obvious (or should be) to someone reading it:
var grid = new WebGrid(canSort: false,
...
Handling Updates with the WCF Data Services...
In my last post, I gave an introduction of the WCF Data Services Toolkit and illustrated how it provides a simple abstraction on top of WCF Data Services, which hopefully makes it easier to layer OData on top of arbitrary data sources (e.g. existing web API). For the sake of simplicity, I only showed the read-only scenario-which makes up a large majority of customer needs-but I also need to show...
February 2011
1 post
You Want To Wrap OData Around What?!?!
This morning we released a project that we’ve been cranking on for a while that is affectionately called the WCF Data Services Toolkit. You can download it here (or pull it down via NuGet using the “WCFDataServicesToolkit” ID), and also get a description of exactly what it is/does. Go read the release notes if you want a deeper explanation, otherwise carry on.
In a nutshell: the...
January 2011
1 post
Avoiding And Identifying The "Geico Effect" In...
One of the most pervasive enemies of software developers is friction in their technology choices. Few things can kill morale quite like the frustration of a framework being completely unintuitive or downright overly complicated. That said, how do you differentiate between something being unnecessarily complex, and just complex? After all, there are difficult and abstract concepts in this field...
September 2010
1 post
My Metaphysical House Burned Down, But I'm Keeping...
I’ve owned the domain lostintangent.com for coming on four years, and it has served as my metaphysical home on the Internet for my random thoughts and technology-centric ramblings. Well, that all came to an end a week ago.
My good friend and colleague, James Senior, was tinkering around on my dedicated server (that housed my blog) and needed to install MySQL to support a WordPress instance...